Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Yahoo has opened up its mobile oneSearch service to anyone with a phone who can access the Internet. The offering was previously available as part of Yahoo Go for Mobile, a mobile phone-optimized content only compatible with certain handsets. Yahoo claims 85% of mobile phones on the market can use the service. OneSearch is initially available to users in the U.S., and Yahoo plans to roll it out in additional languages and countries in the coming months.

In a bold move, Yahoo has placed a button called "Dare to Compare" on the oneSearch Web site which opens a 21-page document containing screen shots that compare the results of a Google mobile search with a Yahoo oneSearch mobile search. Rather than displaying lists of links as search results, oneSearch pulls up a range of results, including news headlines, images, business listings, and reviews. The service is designed to make searching for and finding information as quick as possible, Yahoo said.

Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have all begun offering search services tailored to mobile-phone users, all of which deliver advertisements in their search results. The online giants are competing against handset makers like Nokia that often include their own search mechanisms in phones as well as startups like Medio Systems that offer search services that mobile operators can self-brand.